A chance to go to school for deaf children in Uganda

Deaf Child Worldwide has been working with partners in Bushenyi district in Uganda since 2005. You can read more about our work with them on our website.

Despite the fact that the Uganda government declared Universal Primary Education, there are still few school places for deaf children and hardly any trained teachers. The existing special schools charge fees which many poor families can not pay. Stigma also means deaf children are hidden at home or excluded from school. Kasiru meaning “stupid” is a common term used to describe deaf children and many families think their deaf children are not capable of learning. Even teachers had negative attitudes in the past – you can read testimonials written by teachers that were involved in the first phase of our work in Bushenyi here

However, thanks to our work – we are giving many deaf children their first chance to go to school. Their parents are amazed at the results. After only 2 months of our latest project, 43 deaf children were attending school daily and getting a chance to interact with their peers and learn literacy and numeracy. This is a huge achievement and will literally transform the lives of the kids involved. We are really proud of all the hard work of parents, teachers and kids in Bushenyi!

Deaf children in Kibera slum – doubly disabled?

Once again – a bit of a time-lag from my last post – I am not long back from a trip to Kenya. I would have loved to have blogged whilst I was there – but somehow in amongst my hectic work schedule I never quite found time. Disappointing.

Still I want to share with you a visit that I made to Little Rock – an early childhood development centre in Kibera slum. Kibera has the dubious honour of being Africa’s 2nd largest informal settlements. (Soweto in South Africa has the top spot). The children at Little Rock are from poor families – some are orphans or have family members affected by the HIV pandemic. There are also disabled and deaf children. As I looked round the tiny classrooms at children keen to learn and share with us what they had learnt, it struck me that the combination of disability and poverty is a deadly one and that organisations like Little Rock are doing vital work.

Without the work of Little Rock, I wondered how many of these deaf children would have had access to so much language. How many of them would have been able to communicate with us in such a lively and enthusiastic way? Early Childhood Development centres provide nursery education but also provide basic health services and nutritious food. Attending one of these centres can be life changing for any children from one of the 1:5 Kenyan families that can’t meet their basic food needs or from the 1.2million who infected with HIV.

Poverty itself is disabling. But what about the children who come from one of those families and have a disability? Where family resources are already overstretched, parents might not have time to do anything other than survive – so learning Sign Language, or spending time helping their disabled children with feeding, toileting or exercises might not be a priority. Little Rock helps children who would otherwise, in many cases, be isolated, hungry and not in school. But in Little Rock, there is hope for the future. The centre nourishes their bodies and their minds and if education really is one of the routes out of poverty, these kids will have a better start than many.

As I left, I thought about meeting the same kids in 20 years time… I wonder what the future holds for them? I can only hope that by supporting organisations like Little Rock, Deaf Child Worldwide can make it a bit brighter.

Disabled children – the poorest of the poor?

The international policy conference on the African child started in Addis Ababa in Ethiopia today. The Ethiopian President, Girma Woldegiorgis specifically highlighted disabled children as particularly vulnerable to poverty and that’s certainly borne out by my experience – where in already poor families, deaf children are often the first ones to be denied access to education and pushed into labouring on family farms or hawking on the streets.

He also talked about the millions of girls who are victims of physical and sexual abuse accross Africa – and that’s something which also disproportionately affects disabled children. The UN Report on Violence Against Disabled Children in 2005 said that the world’s 200 million disabled children were at least 1.7 times as likely to be the victims of abuse than their non-disabled peers. More horrifying data has been found in specific country studies – a national survey of deaf adults in Norway found 80% of all deaf individuals surveyed report sexual abuse at some point in their childhood

So what is the solution? The African Child Policy Forum said that halving world poverty is impossible without focusing on child poverty. I would add that within a focus on child poverty, a focus on disabled children is also essential.

We need investment in health, education and nutrition of children – but we also need to make sure those investments promote services that are accessible to disabled children and challenge the stigma and discrimination that affects many disabled children in Africa.

I will await the outcomes of the policy conference – but more importantly I will await action from African governments, and development agencies. The sooner consideration of how to include disabled children becomes a mandatory part of development aid, the better.

Deaf friendly textbooks in Philippines

I’ve been a bit quiet of late – but I should have lots to blog about in the future as I am very busy working with our colleagues in Kenya on plans for reaching families with deaf children across 5 different districts.

On a totally separate and very interesting note – one of our small projects in Philippines recently sent us a project update report. They have been working to produce new deaf-friendly versions of the elementary school textbooks – 2 on English, 1 on Science and 1 on Mathematics. The books are heavily illustrated and have simplified language to make them ultra accessible. The interesting response from the testing that has been done on these is that both hearing and deaf students found them more useful. So it just goes to show – education materials that are more accessible are more accessible for every one. Just another reason why, in continuation from my previous post, that education for all really does benefit all children!

You can find out more about the work we’re funding in Philippines by linking to our website.

Do we really mean “all” when we say education for all?

Next week the Global Campaign for Education will launch its latest Action Week and attempt to break the Guinness World Record for the biggest lesson ever… If you’re a teacher or a student you might want to find out how your school can get involved or download free lesson plans at the Send My Friend website

Oxfam are talking about Global Action Week on their blog - but I’m wondering how much attention they’ve paid to the fact that worldwide one third of the out of school children have a disability…

What I find hard to understand is the fact that many international development organisations acknowledge that more girls than boys miss out on education and have made sure they focus on this in their programmes. But despite the scary statistic that 98% of disabled children in developing countries are not in school, not nearly as many organisations seem to have wised up to the fact that “education for all” will never be a reality unless we can make sure that disabled and deaf children can get to school, too.

That means that international organisations need to focus more of their efforts on making education in developing countries accessible. For many deaf children in developing countries that means providing education in the national Sign Language, either by training deaf teachers or providing interpreters. It’s not only about the schools, we also need to make sure communities are aware of their children’s rights and help challenge the stigma attached to disability.

All our governments can play a role – not only in allocating funding to education, but also in ensuring that funding is used to reform the education system to make sure that it genuinely meets the needs of all children. Civil society can support families with disabled or deaf children to campaign for their rights and provide models of inclusive education.

If you want to get involved in the Global Campaign – why not think about how you can raise the profile of all those disabled children missing out on school and ask questions about how governments and mainstream organisations make sure they’re included…I hope one day that education for all will really mean all.

Can a UN convention change the world?

On 3 April, Ecuador became the 20th country to ratify the UN Convention on Persons With Disabilities which means that on 3 May, the convention comes into force globally.

Whilst the convention could be a powerful legal tool to change the lives of the 650 million disabled people worldwide – I wonder whether it will be? There is already so much legislation already failing to be implemented all over the developing world…

The convention has raised the profile of shocking human rights abuses suffered by disabled people (and deaf children!) all over the world – and it has forced governments to think about their responsibilities to ensure equal rights. But will it – actually lead to ACTION? Or will it simply be an opportunity for nice announcements and new unimplemented laws…?

To avoid this – holding governments to account and providing practical examples of what’s possible – is essential and that’s where civil society (like us) comes in! We work with movements of deaf children and their families and local organisations to make sure that rights become reality for deaf children…and we will keep working till we succeed!

I’d love to hear your thoughts about how we can make the rights in the UN Convention become real around the world. Another good place to look for stories/thoughts on the convention is the RatifyNow Blog Swarm

5 top tips for finding out about deaf people in different countries

We reply to lots of requests for information from people all over the world who want to find out more about what’s happening for deaf children in their country or somewhere where they have visited. Here are the best places to look:

1. Deaf Child Worldwide Network… OK – so I have to big up our own site first – but we do have a database of over 1000 organisations with an interest in childhood deafness worldwide. You can search by country and get contact details for all the organisations listed.

2. The World Federation of the Deaf is the central international organisation of national associations of Deaf people. It’s national members are based in 127 countries worldwide, and are the people to contact if you want to get in touch with the adult Deaf community in any country.

3. Deaf Cultures and Sign Languages of the World has lists of web-based sources from many of the world’s countries from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe. Check it out to find out more about what’s out going on out there.

4. Gallaudet University – the world’s first Sign Language bilingual university has a list of published material on deaf people, deaf culture and sign language in other countries. You’ll need access to a library to get to this stuff, but it makes interesting reading if you do.

5. On the ground – if you are in a country – your first stop should be deaf schools or clubs in your area. You can also contact the Ministry of Education (for deaf schools), Ministry of Health (for audiology services and outreach workers). If you can’t find a deaf association, finding the National Umbrella Organisation for Associations of Disabled People might help you get in touch.

Hope this is useful – please let me know if you’ve got any additions to this list or if you know of other useful resources…

Family matters…

…a lot to deaf children. As our organisation was set up by and is governed by parents of deaf children we are committed to working through families to reach deaf children. But in developing countries, families have so many different priorities… getting money, getting food, where to live, someone’s sick …the daily grind means that a child’s deafness is the last thing to worry about. For example in Kenya, one adult in five fails to meet their basic food needs every day. In the same country we did research that showed families were unwilling to pay school/medical fees for their deaf kids because they didn’t believe they would get the same return on their investment as with their other children.

At Deaf Child Worldwide, we believe that situation can change. There are practical steps that can be taken to help families support their deaf children and give them equal opportunities with others at home. The answer is to make sure families understand that their deaf children are capable of going to school and getting employment…make sure families have the ability to communicate with their kids and know about what organisations are out there to support them. Outreaching to families who know nothing about deafness is a key objective of our organisation – making services accessible to families is a personal passion too – that’s why I worked with the Enabling Education Network to produce a book Family Friendly! Working with deaf children and their communities worldwide It’s an action learning toolkit filled with real life case studies of what our partners and others have done to make sure families are able to support their deaf children… You can download it here or e-mail me at info@deafchildworldwide.org to get a paper or CD Rom copy…

Blogging about Deaf Child Worldwide

Hello, welcome to my blog. I work as a Programmes Manager for Deaf Child Worldwide. We work to support deaf children in developing countries. The world is a very unequal place - and deaf children living in poor countries feel that inequality more than many. They’re often kept at home, not given the opportunity to gain language skill and denied their rights to an education. We’re trying to change this and this blog will be about how we do that. I want to share stories, successes and failures from our partners around the world and make everyone more aware of what things are like for deaf children in developing countries – and how hard many people – both deaf and hearing are working for positive change.

Just in case, you have heard of us before, we used to be called the International Deaf Children’s Society, because we’re actually the international development agency of the National Deaf Children’s Society in the UK. But in March we got a new name and this blog will talk about our new ambitious plans as well as all the great things we’re achieving on the ground.

Please post comments telling me what you’d like to hear about and if you have any questions about what we do…